Chad Mirkin discusses his career and how Dickinson shaped it

EVANSTON, Ill.–Recent winner of the prestigious Dan David Prize in the Future Time Dimension, and one of the world’s foremost experts in nanotechnology, Chad Mirkin ’86 is the director of Northwestern University’s International Institute for Nanotechnology. And the former chemistry major cites his time at Dickinson College as where it all began.

“I wasn’t born to be a chemist,” says Mirkin, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Engineering. “The fact that Dickinson encouraged me to get involved with many different things, to sample many different topics, was also important. … The professors really inspired me to want to pursue a career and gave me the confidence to go do it.”